A new lawsuit calls into question whether Riverhouse, Battery Park City’s LEED Gold condo jewel, is actually delivering a gold-standard green living experience.
LEED for Neighborhoods is still fairly new, and not yet a big deal — it’s represented by the red dots, not the white space — but it’s an idea that we at gbNYC have a (totally platonic) green-dork crush on.
The good news is that many of the 111 recommendations are either general and commonsense enough that no one could oppose them — add “environmental protection” as a “fundamental principle” in the “intent” portion of the construction code; enforce said construction codes more fully; streamline NYCDEP’s policies for removing asbestos; streamline and consolidate regulation practices. A large number are similarly unobjectionable by dint of their small-bore nature — it’s hard to imagine anyone getting too hacked-off over the idea of recycling fluorescent lightbulbs more efficiently or making staircases and water fountains more available. But a great many of them, though, are pretty freaking bold, and notably bolder and more aggressive than you’d imagine from reading the desultory coverage of it.
I apologize for the interruption, but if you haven’t yet checked out the Green Real Estate Journal, I’d like to encourage you to do so. Again, the idea behind GRELJ is that it will allow us to delve into some of the thornier legal issues associated with green building in much greater detail than here at gbNYC, where our focus will continue to be projects, deals, and other news items of interest to the New York City green building community. Although we won’t be posting with the same degree of frequency at GRELJ, much of the utility of the site will come from the discussion in the comments, where we’ve already seen some really terrific discourse. Nevertheless, it’s been a little over a month since GRELJ launched and already we’ve had some great content.
The Hoekenga House in West Cape May, New Jersey was designed by Cecil Baker + Partners Architects of Philadelphia and is pursuing a LEED Gold certification from USGBC. The 3100-square-foot home features a variety of green design features ranging from a geothermal heating and cooling system to a green roof that includes local flora and roof shingles manufactured from 85 percent recycled-content material. Gretchen Hoekenga, a college professor from Florida and former landscape architect, is developing the project and hopes to sell it at unspecified asking price to an older couple; although the home offers modern green amenities, as you can see Cecil Baker’s design does strive to blend in with local Cape May architecture.
You may recall that, back in December, the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board approved Bates Masi Architects’ controversial design for a modern two-story green office building at 132 North Main Street in East Hampton that would seek an unspecified level of LEED certification from USGBC. In a last ditch effort to stop the project from proceeding, a group of local residents have filed a lawsuit against the Board in Supreme Court for Suffolk County, alleging that it was negligent in approving the design and requesting that the court review and overturn the Board’s determination.
Signed into law September 30 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s hotly debated Climate Change Smart Growth Bill, or SB375, which links land use and transportation planning with climate change, will change the way California communities are built and help provide residents a pedestrian-friendly lifestyle near jobs, shopping and entertainment. This new law could be a model for other states as they look at how climate change should impact thinking on new development.
We haven’t been keeping to our regular posting schedule here at gbNYC for a few reasons, the most significant of which is a major technical glitch on our back end that we’re furiously trying to iron out. Accordingly, we’ve decided to take a break for no longer than the rest of the year to get our house in order. In the interim, you can find us over at the newly launched Green Real Estate Law Journal , where we’ll be exploring many of the green building legal issues that we’ve presented to you here at gbNYC over the course of the past two years. Our first post includes a link to the most recent issue of the Counselors of Real Estates’ Real Estate Issues, which is devoted exclusively to articles discussing the risk management side of building green.
Once upon a time there was a voluntary, market-driven green building rating system called LEED®. In accordance with the intent of its drafters at the U.S. Green Building Council, it allowed developers to evaluate the feasibility of pursuing a third-party green building certification for a particular project based on a standard set of prerequisites and credits and then make an informed decision about whether or not follow the green brick road and design and develop accordingly. Along comes one municipality after another that decides that a voluntary market-based incentive to build certified green buildings is not enough. While many in the building industry cringed at the thought of mandatory LEED regulations for many reasons, they had little idea that it could actually get worse. Case in point: San Francisco’s mandate of LEED on acid for redevelopment projects.
Frank Talk: Gehry Explains Dropping The (Shiny, Maybe A Little Over The Top) Bomb On LEED
Frank Gehry has never shown as much interest in green buildings as he has in really shiny buildings, but when he talks LEED, we’re listening.